Audi connect - worth the $$??
 

My Audi connect subscription ran out about a month ago and I have been meaning to renew it. However it's been 30 days and quite frankly, I'm not sure I really miss it. Do you guys really feel that it's worth it or is it a waste of money?

I had it with my A6 and even paid for it. With my new A8, I always think I want it but always forget about it. It's nice when you want to talk to the MMI and ask where something is located and then go straight to the NAV. I also liked the news and weather but it was just a gimick for me to show people.

I think if you only drive locally it isn't much use. I find it of some use when traveling out of the local area.

Its $450 for 30 months(?). **weather is an good feature but the rest is not worth the $$$ // the Google search is really good though but we have lived w/o it for years and if you have a smart phone its an extra expense // a $200 Garmin will do quite well. NAV is good Google Earth is extra stuff, needed, maybe not!

took a 9000 mile x-country trip SEPT/15 and I came in handy but Garmin would do the same to search gas or hotels or restaurants! Ditto for a 3500 mile Florida trip DEC/15

I did not use and don't miss mine much. I got many refusals from the service when I asked it for something, saying the connection was busy, etc. With a smartphone you have many options that will fill the gap. On a related note, The Sirius traffic was so delayed in it's updates to traffic that it was comical. Waze beats all when it comes to current road conditions.

I'm using US Mobile which uses the T-Mobile network. Starts at $4.70 per month after a $3.99 sim. No contract - you just go online ea month and pick the amount you want. Other monthly plans are available like $7.70 for 200MB and so on. I mainly use AC for online searches, gas prices, news, weather etc. I rarely use Google Earth I never use the wifi hotspot both of which are data hogs. I barely scratch the surface of the 100MB.

I like to use voice command with "Google local search". This works surprising well for navigating to both businesses and street addresses. Does this rely upon Audi Connect (I have it)? There is a bit of a delay after I speak and the results seem more than what the car's local nav database contains, so I assume it is some online service doing the voice analysis and generating the results.

Street addresses and a fixed, limited qty of POIs are part of the car's internal nav data and not part of Audi Connect. Google Online Destination POIs, which are a dynamically updated equivalent to Google Map data, are a function of AC. As are Google Earth, news, weather, gas prices, etc.

Voice command is a function of the car's MMI and the software translates your speech to text that the searches can recognize. It's not a part pf Audi Connect.

I don't think I'm going to renew it. In my experience, the iPhone and associated apps are superior to the Audi connect system. Furthermore, I don't find the voice recognition to be that great. I ask it to call someone th response is typically "pardon?" Or "that contact is not available". Frankly, I can't understand why the auto manufacturers can't just adopt the Google platform for a lot of this stuff. The Google map navigation running off the phone blows away the MMI nav in my opinion.

Voice commands very rarely fail me, and I appreciate the mmi over my phone simply for not having to mount it to my windshield, leaving me with a smudge ring to clean up every time I want to use it. I did do the voice adaption, though, I'm not sure how much that had to do with how it currently performs.